All Is True
Directed by: Kenneth Branagh
Written by: Ben Elton
Starring: Kenneth Branagh, Judi Dench, Kathryn Wilder, Lydia Wilson, Hadley Fraser, Ian McKellen, Gerard Horan, Jack Colgrave Hirst, John Dagleish, Michael Rouse, Sam Ellis, Eleanor de Rohan
Biography/Drama/History - 101 min Reviewed by Charlie Juhl on 13 May 2019
Written by: Ben Elton
Starring: Kenneth Branagh, Judi Dench, Kathryn Wilder, Lydia Wilson, Hadley Fraser, Ian McKellen, Gerard Horan, Jack Colgrave Hirst, John Dagleish, Michael Rouse, Sam Ellis, Eleanor de Rohan
Biography/Drama/History - 101 min Reviewed by Charlie Juhl on 13 May 2019
William Shakespeare wrote many of the world’s most famous plays spawning countless adaptations which continue to influence contemporary literature, cinema, music, and television. Variations of Romeo & Juliet, Macbeth, and King Lear remain so pervasive, their author, may even be referenced as ‘The Bard’, and everybody knows to whom you refer. Moving beyond the genius of his word and the mythical status his legacy has achieved, we must remember William Shakespeare was a human being like the rest of us - he donned his breeches one leg at a time.
The idea of Shakespear is many different things to many different people. Shakespeare in Love presented a younger and more lovelorn figure than we typically associate with the Elizabethan scribbler and Anonymous went so far as to ask if Shakespeare was a fraud smack in the middle of its movie poster. Anonymous was historical fiction as is most of Kenneth Branagh’s All Is True. In today’s parlance, it is “Based on a true story”, but that vague description may be stretched into more scandalous interpretations. After the original Globe Theater burned down in 1613 during a performance of Henry VIII, whose alternate title is All Is True, Shakespeare retired. He moved back to Stratford-upon-Avon and attempted to reacquaint himself with his wife, two surviving daughters, and mourn his dead son, Hamnet.
The idea of Shakespear is many different things to many different people. Shakespeare in Love presented a younger and more lovelorn figure than we typically associate with the Elizabethan scribbler and Anonymous went so far as to ask if Shakespeare was a fraud smack in the middle of its movie poster. Anonymous was historical fiction as is most of Kenneth Branagh’s All Is True. In today’s parlance, it is “Based on a true story”, but that vague description may be stretched into more scandalous interpretations. After the original Globe Theater burned down in 1613 during a performance of Henry VIII, whose alternate title is All Is True, Shakespeare retired. He moved back to Stratford-upon-Avon and attempted to reacquaint himself with his wife, two surviving daughters, and mourn his dead son, Hamnet.
The first stutter steps into retirement offer no solace nor rest for Shakespeare (Kenneth Branagh, Dunkirk). His immediate family is unfamiliar with his habits and unused to his presence around the manor. Shakespeare spent the majority of his time in London staging theatrical performances at the Globe and writing. His brief visits back to rural Stratford were mere interludes from his metropolitan existence. Wife Anne (Judi Dench, Red Joan) treats William as an important houseguest opting for formality over familiarity. Judith (Kathryn Wilder, Ready Player One), Hamnet’s surviving twin sister, chafes at her spinster status and from her father’s emotional neglect, even more so now that his two hobbies are constructing a garden in memory of Hamnet and reading the boy's initial attempts at poetry in a routine, hypnotic state. The good news for the script and the audience is that frustrated children with secrets tend to have loose lips.
Susannah Shakespeare (Lydia Wilson, Star Trek Beyond), William’s eldest daughter, married a Puritan, John Hall (Hadley Fraser, The Legend of Tarzan). Enjoy the irony whereby William’s son-in-law would sooner ban theaters for encouraging sin and distracting from more heavenly pursuits rather than applaud his father-in-law’s works. With time to think, stir the pot, and involve himself in local scandals, many involving his own family, William’s words both come back to haunt him and provide a benefit as he uses his working knowledge of them to navigate prickly situations. On one hand, William employs Titus Andronicus to not so subtly warn an accuser of Susannah’s. On the other, William’s loves sonnets, obviously not about his wife, rear their head when the mighty Earl of Southampton (Ian McKellen, Beauty and the Beast), pays a house call.
He may only have around six minutes of screen time, but Ian McKellen about walks away with the whole production. His performance stops the movie dead as Branagh, who plays William with much reserve and emotional discretion, allows McKellen to speechify and dominate the scene. McKellen, Dench, and Branagh are all Shakespeare veterans with decades of tackling the Bard’s most challenging roles under their belts. They play their parts here with aplomb, yet are stifled from achieving true greatness by a blasé script. All Is True is as maddeningly episodic and melodramatic as General Hospital. As Stratford-upon-Avon Turns gives us plot to chew on, but it sacrifices the character study of history’s greatest creative mind for kitchen gossip and the early 17th century’s version of a Wikipedia entry.
The story is lacking, but Branagh is a proven director and brings his love for all things Elizabethan to bear on the production. Artificial light? I think not - Branagh lights the nighttime scenes with candles. His makeup transformation includes the large forehead and pointed beard. Scenes in the town square are set amongst mud and refuse. The camera is usually low, looking up into rooms and faces allowing McKellen and Dench to overpower us that much more. Even though Anne was eight years older than William, Dench is far too old to be a plausible wife for Branagh, but which of us would deny perhaps the greatest living Shakespearean actress another opportunity? All Is Lost is a celebration. William Shakespeare was a man who happened to have a gift to write settings and emotions he had no business understanding given his background, education, and social status, yet there was a man and there was a genius. Exploring his retirement is a worthy effort, yet saddled with conventional hysterics and melodrama serves no other purpose than to tell a mundane tale, a product we can find anywhere - don’t saddle Shakespeare with that banality.
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